Marilyn Chambers Behindthegreendoor

School: who cut and those who govern

At the next international surveys on the level of education among primary school pupils Italy is likely to record a dramatic deterioration. Respectively in 2006 (PIRLS) and 2007 (TIMSS), our primary school teachers in the coexistence of so to speak, had obtained 50 and 60 place in the world.
It took a complex mix of incompetence, ideology dextroses and demagoguery, even to start the destruction of this national excellence.
We know that the minister Gelmini justified his "reform" as running a budget imposed by diktat "genius" Tremonti - that of "the culture you do not eat" - which has operated a cut of 8 billion euro in three years for the school. Cut that has not only origins in cash needs, but hides a precise idea of \u200b\u200bthe training of future generations.
The Democratic Party, that "no ifs, ands or buts' calls for a sharp U-turn on education finance, risk becoming associated with the party of spending and misguided solidarity too often touted (See League's rhetoric) as merely squander public money. But it is true that cash needs, and then for the common good in theory, should be cut, and therefore compromise the educational service of a country?
operated by the Department's recent reorganization of the town of Padua School provides some useful data that are worth reflecting on what a reformist approach. While the government reduces the public welfare fund from more than 2500 million € in 2008 to 271 in 2013 (yes, yes you read correctly -2.229 billion in 5 years!), The municipality of Padova has done for the education services half miracle . Within two years, speaking strictly on rates and modes of delivery services on individual demand led by the city Department Piron, achieved a total saving of about € 1.7 mil. The lines of this paper were twofold: 1) greater transparency and control over users of the service (checks ISEE), 2) redefining the supply of the service table (new contract tables) that is more equitable because it is right that to qualify public support are those actually in need, and increasing the number of families assisted in accessing services (care, cafeterias, schools, kindergarten). Thanks to this intervention will not only be preserved municipal services to the school, but in some cases even strengthened the educational activities that school is usually to offer (because the school is above all social agency), and I refer to the projects of integration, and support of Roma children, bullying prevention and early school leaving, school construction (+180 jobs nest), and also to an actual increase in grants to support (+50%) to poor families, in short, a real political and material solidarity.
The case shows that the equation of Padua economic austerity = indiscriminate felling resulting in depletion of education and its social functions, is an exclusive right to the government. We can and must be reconciled with the quality of economic austerity services. We can and we must strengthen the school as a subject and public service, who knows how to implement real social justice and preserve the common good of future generations. Philip
Pacchiega
school executive responsible citizen PD